Fenixp

(Damage Reveived)/4 (Damage Done)*4 That's all the effort you really need to spend, altho I'm sure Obsidian has done a bit more work than that. As for "Effort that could have gone elsewhere", I found out about the news 30 minutes ago and already sold the game to at least one person on this alone (if it actually gets implemented anyway)

While they might not be a punishment to the player, they're bloody stupid :-P I'm sorry, but for higher level combat, you either build your characters in such a way that they miss/graze as little as possible or you don't build those characters as damage dealers in which case it doesn't really matter anyway. At that point, both misses and grazes just become a statistic you learn to calculate with. As for low-level combat, IE games went along the lines of: Me: *Miss* Wolf: *Miss* *Long staring contest* Me: *Miss* Wolf: *Miss* *Long staring contest* Me: *Miss* Wolf: *Miss* *Long staring contest* Wolf: *Hit* Me *Sigh, reload, try again* Truly the kind of reactive high-level strategy I'm looking for in my party-based RPGs :-P

IIRC Night Dive is 'only' remaking the original System Shock and they talk of SS3 in terms of a remote possibility even in case they would find a partner as opposed to something planned. Still, I mean... Look at my avatar.

So like chess :-P

Yeah, while those two NPCs were very interesting, I found them... One-dimensional? I'm not sure how to describe it easily, thing is, I felt like they both had a gimmick and pattern according to which they behaved every single time and didn't feel particularly believable.

Every single member of my party was able to do -something- in every single encounter in Pillars, yet vast majority of encounters in Baldur's Gate I spend auto-attacking while using one or two abilities. Still, I would like to see a concept similar to dual and multi classing present in Pillars of Eternity and that something like that isn't really present is one of my big complaints. On the other hand I also understand that these systems are hell to balance and properly design, and we're comparing DnD which was in development for over a decade already when first BG came out to system in Pillars which was developed for a few years to my knowledge.

Might be because 'people' are not a single entity. You're probably the first one showing surprise over the fact that every single person has his own view on what PoE was all about. Oh. You might want to re-read the post you originally responded to then, after reading it entirely, you might manage to count four ;-) I thought you were referring to something else entirely.

Well, in Morrowind anyway, they had to sack this feature in Oblivion (yea you can turn it off in the .ini file, but then essential NPCs start dying randomly in wilderness. That's the point where you find out why is that they sacked the feature.) But yeah, absolutely, TES games were always focused on the sandbox element. As for the quote you have posted, eh... a) Who's TempS? b) Did you notice it's speaking of Fallout 3, not New Vegas? Sorry, I don't understand relevance of the quote. Anyway, when I'm talking of non-linearity of New Vegas story, there's a ton of choice and even more reactivity - for instance, early on you meet a character belonging to the Legion who seems to be far too strong to defeat at that point. If you manage to kill him, this act will get mentioned later on by NPCs. There's more stuff like that, you can pick the faction you wish to help you with the main quest including becoming your own faction, and side-quests tend to have more ways of resolving as well. It's kind of cool actually. And yes, I do know that Pillars allows you to do a lot of that too.

Zenbane, on 14 Nov 2015 - 9:22 PM, said: 1) The Witcher 2) The Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Skyrim) 3) Gothic (1, 2, & 3) The Elder Scrolls? I mean they're as non-linear as you can get, movement-wise, but the individual stories tend to be extremely linear and I do believe that's what Chris Avellone is criticizing. (I mean, I don't think you can criticize Pillars for lack of freedom of movement) Unless you're talking about player being able to pick which stories does he wish to take part in. Anyway, there's quite a few of these: Fallout: New Vegas would fit the bill extremely well, even adjusting to choices you'd normally not expect. Alpha Protocol I suppose, altho freedom of movement suffers. Heh, now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of games by Obsidian just come to mind. There are? ... Did I miss something? Oh I guess you're referring to Gilded Vale?

Well... I mean there's freedom and then there's freedom. Pillars gave you way more freedom of movement than most games do (including those mr. Avellone worked on), there's a grand total of 2 chokepoints which need to unlock for another big part of the world to open (+ tutorial and epilogue). On the other hand I definitely agree that the main storyline should have given you more freedom of choice and could have been made more reactive - I imagine that's what Chris Avellone is talking about.

Actually my thoughts went more along the lines of "Eh, you're probably gonna be killed in some contrived manner anyway, whatever."

In another words: Take a look at what Divinity: Original Sin did and do that. I agree completely.

So, first of all, Forgotten Realms might very well be the best fantasy setting in existence, but I have only been exposed to it trough videogames. When I played the original Baldur's Gate, every single book concerning lore felt incredibly boring to me, and after some time I just gave up. I grew bored with the lore presented in Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights as well - Forgotten Realms feels, to me, like by far the least interesting fantasy setting that I know of, and I know quite a few fantasy settings. Yes, it's a lotr knockoff, and I'm sorry what I have seen has nothing on Tolkien's work. I love the concept of various realms which was best explored in Planescape Torment, but Forgotten Realms is just ... Meh. As for morality, whenever I was unsure how to resolve a quest, I cast detect alignment and chose whoever had the alignment I was roleplaying. I could pretty much bet that the game would consider joining the opposing side an "Evil" decision or "Good" decision. I absolutely believe that a good writer can do a lot with it - but Bioware back then merely had competent writers and it shows. I can't say whether the same ultimately holds true for Baldur's Gate 2 since I have tried to play BG2 for more than 6 hours about 4 times already, and every single time I was bored to tears by its plot and characters. After I finish the original again, I'm about midway trough right now, I will give the game another shot. I'm quite looking forward to it, but I'm not too optimistic. Now, as for what Pillars of Eternity presents us with, I'm fully aware that there already is literature which does the same - and does it far better. That's not what I'm talking about. Presence of Elves, Dwarves, Halfl... I mean, Orlans - sure, there's absolutely nothing interesting about that. That's also not at all what I'm talking about (and I'm not about to stop reading every piece of literature which is only concerned with the boring humans.) I'm not talking about magical system or races or what kind of trees they're using. What I'm talking about is that I have never seen a videogame dealing with themes of reincarnation, of scientific progress or faith in this way. I have never seen a videogame which would have an overall tone similar to that present in Pillars of Eternity. I mean you have noticed it yourself and you happen to not like it. Sure, Pillars deals with many of these issues in an extremely clunky manner, but that's okay - I always appreciate the underlying thoughts first and foremost. Sure, writing in Pillars is not that great and while I feel it's far better than in Baldur's Gate (and it definitely is better than in the original game by a large margin), it has big problems, especially with exposition dumps and unnatural dialogue. But you know what? I have found and read every single book on lore in Pillars and enjoyed them thoroughly - RPG's lore has never managed to draw me in this much ever since playing Morrowind. Everything in that world is built around the themes I have mentioned in one way or another, and I loved it for this focus and dedication (that it's a brand new setting also helps of course.)

Michael_Galt, first of all, Pillars of Eternity is still first and foremost a game. Its setting feels more realistic than Forgotten Realms, because Forgotten Realms is filled with fantasy clichés, silliness and strict division of good and evil, with only neutral characters being actually really interesting (I mean this as a rule to which there are exceptions) I also think it's more realistic than, say, Game of Thrones or The Witcher, which are filled with grittiness and darkness for the sake of it. However, that I believe the game is more realistic than those two does not make it realistic - as I have mentioned at the beginning, it's still a game. It has a script, written by scriptwriters, which is written to achieve some goal and have some sort of effect on its audience. Strict realism is out of the picture, and artistic vision (woooooooo, daaark ghost of aaartiiistic visioooooon!) always takes precedence. It's a shame this is taking away from your experience with the game, but I don't know of another which would have its world and its lore presented quite like this. And I always like when I see something new.

The Adra Statue was actually pretty impressive. And I definitely remember the level in Endless Paths with Vampires (Fampyrs, whatever) in the statue's hand, along with the quest which was pretty cool. And then there was the level structured as part of a hive of those ... Hive ... Creature ... Things. And then there was the experimental level with four elements where Kana found the tablet. ... I remember a lot from the game, surprisingly enough, I usually don't manage to do that so long after last playing it. Can't say whether or not it's more or less memorable than Icewind Dale, I played the game ages ago and don't remember much (I do want to replay it after I finish playing Baldur's Gate. I want to roll a Cleric/Ranger for added hilarity.) As for writing, I personally enjoy games which are more wordy - Planescape Torment is by far my favourite Infinity Engine game. However, I can certainly appreciate minimalistic simplicity with which Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale approached a lot of situations, NPCs just telling you information you needed to finish a quest and only giving you options to reply if it was relevant enough. I hated it when I played BG back in 1999, I grew to like the approach quite a bit now.

As far as I know, the only game which shares most of its aspects with Pillars of Eternity is the original Baldur's Gate. Pillars is even more similar to Baldur's Gate than Baldur's Gate 2 was - BG2 stripped the free exploration and is the first game by Bioware which came up with the much more linear Bioware formula that they are using to this day. Thing is, I love sandbox games, and I prefer Baldur's Gate to the second game. As far as I'm concerned, Pillars of Eternity is the sequel Baldur's Gate deserved - keeping every single aspect of Baldur's Gate which made its gameplay stand out to me and improving upon them as opposed to doing something (even if ever so slightly) different. And since I prefer BG1 to 2, I prefer Pillars to both Baldur's Gate games. This also brings the grand total of games which are like the original Baldur's Gate to two. I'd say Pillars did a fairly good job of differentiating itself, and ensuring that it'll remain relevant.

I would actually love if you could create a companion and assign a simple personality to him. Don't make it overly complex, just make him comment on some situations and interrupt some dialogues. That's something I wanted to see ever since Icewind Dale. ... Well that was almost on topic!

I'd be a fan of more such environmental puzzles that you could just stumble upon. Look at Arcanum - there were altars with little poems which would buff you if you figured out what you were supposed to do, these weird NPC mages beyond the edge of one town who would give you a reward for correctly answering a bunch of riddles, there was loads of stuff like that around the game. To me it seems like something relatively simple to do but adding a lot to the exploration aspect of the game. Generally, Pillars needs more puzzles. Never thought I'll say this about any game.

Well... If it is a spiritual sequel to Baldur's Gate, it most definitely has it beat in the story department (not really that difficult to beat the first game there). Let's see what does the second game do :-P

Well those without strong level scaling, yeah. There are things level scaling is good for.

Oh my god, they actually go around each other now as opposed to stare into each other's eyes before giving up on this mind-bending puzzle of walking. The future is here! The pathfinding is still rather poor in both games tho.

I do actually wonder how much of a problem would racism be in a world like Eora - on Earth, from the highly developed races, all you get are Human of various colors and Rats (totally on the level of humans, I science'd this shiz with my rats) But, if you get into a setting in which there are not only regional variations of every single specie, but also a bunch of species themselves, I wonder if these would evolve in such a way that variety is expected and 'normal' - they all speak a common tongue, it's quite clear that they have mixed a long time in the past. After all, the reason for racism to exist is because people have difficulty perceiving anything different than them 'normal', and our brains automatically jump to the conclusion of 'not normal = bad'

My party members in BG routinely get stuck looking at the middle of something because they can't quite figure out how to go around. Mostly a problem with NPCs and sometimes party members themselves (it's funny when they just stare at each other while Minsc gets murdered. Minsc gets damaged a lot.)

Zenbane, out of all people who posted in this topic, you're the only one whose only consistency lies in attacking personality of posters you disagree with and twisting their statements to mean whatever fits your current argument. I don't think I need to elaborate on why is that bad behavior on discussion boards. If you don't want to partake in a discussion, it's easy enough - ignore it. I'm sorry for derailing Sensuki, I won't post on this further.

Yet most of the games they made are real-time with pause RPGs and their roots extend all the way back to Icewind Dale games. And they managed to create an RPG with a combat system which I actually greatly enjoy, something that vast majority of RPGs I have ever played fail to do. "They're bad at RTwP design" coming from someone who, to my knowledge, never released a popular RTwP RPG isn't really an argument which would hold a huge deal of sway given their history. Any day I'll take the opinion of experienced designers over a poster on discussion boards. Okay, I think I'll end this line of thought here, I'm struggling to write this in such a way that you don't feel like your ego is attacked, so just trust me that that's not what I'm trying to do - I'm just trying to point out reality of the situation. Sure, problem is that this particular inconsistency does nothing to defeat Sensuki's arguments, all it does is that if you avoid things he's pointing out, you'll enjoy the combat in Pillars more. And no human mind is ever entirely consistent, there are always conflicts. We're just not built to be entirely consistent. I absolutely recommend you read up on human psychology, it's quite fascinating. Feel free to start with something like "Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite" by Robert Kurzban, it's a bit of a popularization of these ideas, but it's a good read. Edit: Scratch last bit, 'cause you won't find much of use now that I have taken a look at it. I could try to look into some of my wife's literature I keep stealing if you're interested. Edit2: Edited to make the post clearer.